The Internet has enabled significant electronic commerce to develop over the last two decades. Most typically, this e-commerce is supported by a website that transmits information about products or services being offered for sale and that processes orders and payments for sales of those products and services. The website is implemented with a computer, typically called a server, that may be coupled to one or more databases or other computers executing support applications. The server may be coupled to the databases and supporting computers through a common gateway interface or CGI. The data regarding the products and services are contained within files transmitted over a global open computer network known as the Internet. These files may be HTML and XML documents, for example, that are sent to client programs executing on customer computers that are coupled to the Internet. These client programs may be application programs called browsers. The files transmitted to the client programs may also include forms that have objects embedded within them. These objects may be used to communicate information between the client program and the website. This bi-directional communication of information enables a user to shop for goods and services, place an order with a website for goods and/or services, submit payment for the order, and arrange shipping to the desired recipient.
This form of e-commerce has been greatly enhanced by search engines. Search engines are implemented with significant computer resources that are coupled together and made available at a single address on the Internet. The databases at the search engine contain metadata that has been obtained from websites on the Internet. The computer resources at a search engine process an unstructured request by a user to provide a user with a hit list of websites that contain metadata related to the user's query. The search engine provides a short excerpt or summary of the information available at a website contained within a hit list to indicate the reason that the website was selected for inclusion in the hit list. The user may explore the websites provided in a hit list without losing the hit list generated by the search engine. Thus, the user is able to sift through a hit list and evaluate multiple sources for the goods and services being sought by the user.
Being near the top of a hit list is important for sales. Most e-commerce consumers do not exhaustively search the entries in a hit list. Rather, many consumers make a decision after visiting five to ten websites. Navigating through a website can be time consuming and, depending on the bandwidth of the communication conduit to the consumer's computer and the processing resources of the website and the consumer's computer, can be a tedious and frustrating journey. To improve the likelihood that a seller's website is brought to a consumer's attention sooner rather than later in a hit list, portals were developed. Portals enable multiple providers of goods and services to be presented to a user at a single website address. That is, a portal is an electronic version of a mall or shopping center. The diversity of the goods and services offered through the portal increases the likelihood that the metadata for the portal satisfies a user's query and that the portal address is displayed in a hit list. Moreover, the concentration of related websites available through a portal may score higher in the search engines criteria for prioritizing the hit list entries. This higher score enables the portal address to have a greater chance of being ranked highly in a hit list generated by a search engine than a website for a single source of goods or services.
Other variations in e-commerce have arisen as well. One variation is the electronic auction. In one version of the auction, sellers list items with an electronic auction house. The electronic auction house has a single Internet address and a search engine for the site. The search engine enables a potential buyer to obtain a list of items being offered for sale. When an item is selected from the list, a picture of the item is displayed along with some information about the item provided by the seller. Additionally, a rating for the seller may be provided. This information may be used by the buyer to assess the risk that the seller's representations are not completely accurate or that the seller does not timely deliver the item. After viewing the item and related information, the buyer may enter a bid along with identifying information, such as an email address. At the expiration of the auction period for the item, the highest bidder is notified by email that he or she has won the item. The buyer then needs to pay for the item. Some buyers provide payment by mailing a check or money order to the seller. Others use credit cards or a third party payment service. A third party payment service requires a buyer to establish an account with the payment service. Along with personal identification information, the buyer provides data to identify a payment source, such as a credit card, debit card, or other demand account associated with the buyer. After the seller receives payment, the item is shipped to the buyer.
Another electronic marketplace accessible over the Internet solicits data from users and then sells access to the database compiled from the collected data. For example, MONSTER.COM® website solicits resumes from Internet users and compiles those resumes into a database. Employers register with the website operator and pay a fee to search the database for qualified applicants and to post job openings in the operator's database. Public users search the job postings database and submit their resumes. The resumes submitted for a job opening are filtered by the website operator with an employer's criteria for applicants before being presented to a posting employer. In this type of electronic market, the website operator collects a fee for building the resume database and for filtering responses to an employer's job postings.
In the transaction systems discussed above, constraints exist that restrain the robustness of the commerce implemented with such systems. For example, the electronic auction is hampered by the inability to accept cash payments. Literally, millions of persons wanting to remain anonymous do not establish bank accounts or credit card accounts in this country. Consequently, these persons do not have a relationship with a bank so they cannot use electronic funds transaction messages to settle an order. Without a checking account, they are unable to write and send checks to the seller to consummate a sale. Although a money order may be used to pay a seller, a risk exists that a money order, or any other paper instrument, sent by mail may be lost or that the seller will simply cash the paper instrument without sending the goods. Additionally, large volume vendors incur a significant expense to process paper instruments mailed to the vendor for payment of goods. What is needed is a way to pay cash for goods over the Internet without requiring a buyer to have a relationship with a bank or other financial institution to obtain a paper instrument and mail it to the seller.
Even retail sites use the Internet for transactions. For example, point-of-sale (POS) terminals may be used to communicate with vendor websites to facilitate sales of secure items. One type of secure item that may be sold using a POS terminal communicating over the Internet is a calling card that is dispensed from a kiosk or purchased and activated at a convenience store counter. Upon presentation of payment, a cashier or buyer navigates through a set of menus and populates forms with data that are sent to the vendor website. In response to the data retrieved from the transmitted form, the vendor site issues an activation code for a calling card account that is transmitted to the kiosk or POS terminal. To obtain these agents for sales of calling cards, telecommunications carriers solicit bids by sending sales agents to the managers and/or owners of convenience stores and other establishments to negotiate and sign contracts for governing the sales, loss, and commissions for the phone cards. Once the contracts are finalized and executed, the carrier installs proprietary terminals for managing the calling card transactions in a store or multiple branches. The sales location then collects payments for the cards and remits the portion of the payment due the carrier under the agreement.
The resources to address the need for personally soliciting agents to handle in-store sales can be significant for website vendors. The maintenance of a sales force and the need to install proprietary terminals or software for managing the sales eats into profit margins for this intensely competitive market. The expense of finding a new agent, removing the proprietary terminals, and installing them in a new location encourages a vendor to tolerate poorly performing agents rather than to terminate the agent and find another agent. Likewise, retail agents desire competition for their distribution services and want to know other possible vendors that could replace poorly performing vendors. What is needed is an efficient method for securing sales agents located at “brick and mortar” locations. What is needed is a way to facilitate interaction between vendors and their sales agents located at “brick and mortar” locations. What is need is a way of providing sales agents at retail locations with information regarding vendor candidates for the goods and services that the agent wants to offer at the retail location.
Another limitation of previously known electronic markets is the absence of information regarding business opportunities and partners for the retail market. Requests for proposals and bid requests are not available over the Internet, except possibly by discovering a website posting a business opportunity with the aid of a search engine. This type of search requires knowledge of an industry to locate a potential business opportunity candidate. Search engines are designed to promote advertising for consumers so the hit lists generated in an effort to locate business opportunities are not likely to rank the most promising leads for business ventures highly. Moreover, these types of searches use keywords or metadata and do not support the use of structured search terms, business metric data, or business profile data. Additionally, the quality of the information exchanged in this public forum is generally unreliable and requires verification. What is needed is a forum for businesses to solicit and obtain business partners based on the exchange of reliable information without requiring extensive out-of-network research.